Friday, December 25, 2009

From where do the ingredients of "green" technology come? Apparently, mostly from some environmentally toxic mines in China:

Some of the greenest technologies of the age, from electric cars to efficient light bulbs to very large wind turbines, are made possible by an unusual group of elements called rare earths. The world’s dependence on these substances is rising fast.

Just one problem: These elements come almost entirely from China, from some of the most environmentally damaging mines in the country, in an industry dominated by criminal gangs.

Western capitals have suddenly grown worried over China’s near monopoly, which gives it a potential stranglehold on technologies of the future.

So the green revolution which is the centerpiece of Obama's economic plan essentially relies on substituting our dependence on Saudi oil with a dependence on Chinese metals.

This should work really well. Because our dependence on Chinese money to fund government programs we cannot afford is not enough.

5 comments:

We need to face the fact that we have been late for the international dinner for the past 20 years. We should have had a greater presence in Africa. We should have paid closer attention to the Chinese pattern: manufacture shall take place in China. We should have been more careful about selling our technologies to China.

Automobiles, Pharma, military arms, etc. - China is in the ascendant and knocking the US out of the box. Higher education is probably the last "industry" in which we excell but I fear the end to the days when Charlie Chan could boast "I was educated in your country."Democrats are notorious for having few original thoughts that would encourage creative problem solving. No, they are best at rearranging the furniture already in a room.

At every turn, we seem to be restructuring the global economy to accommodate international criminality. This is just another. There is another that is bigger and more immediate: why we need big integrated banks that are "too big to fail". That discussion begins in earnest begins very soon. The American banks will argue that they need scale to be competitive in the world. Really? Is anyone going to ask why? Here's why:

The biggest industry in the world is the illegal drug trade. It's bigger than oil and bigger than the arms trade.

The drug cartels transact almost all of their business in US dollars and IN CASH. Unless the end game is to see who takes the most dollars out of circulation, that money has to be laundered... in a dollar-based economy big enough to absorb it.

There is only one of those in the world. Big banks that are fully integrated with industrial operations sure provide enough size to absorb vast amounts of cash while eliminating lots of checkpoints to slow the movement enough to detect the activity.

Money laundering on that scale requires the cooperation of banks, industrial companies and government. Let's combine those three and corrupt America beyond any hope of redemption. "We don't need no stinkin' regulations."

Think of a snake swallowing a pig. We don't like snakes swallowing pigs and snakes aren't big enough to hide the fact that they just swallowed a pig. So we need bigger snakes.

After reading the post and the comments, I fear even more for the U.S.

Rather than the implication that we shouldn't do green things, how about supporting what appears to be actually happening? Namely, finding a U.S. source or finding an alternative.

Regarding Africa, China appears to be horning in similar to what MX is doing to the U.S., albeit on a smaller scale. The same people who support the latter also tend to support "free" trade, including most of the tea party leadership.

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